Source: CREW, Robert Maguire
Photo: Miru Osuga/CREW

This article was originally published on April 14, 2025. We also asked ChatGPT (not the author) if the Trump Organization used undocumented workers at its construction sites and properties. ChatGPT’s response appears at the end of this article. It appears Trump’s hypocrisy is alive and well.

While President Donald Trump and his administration reiterate the need to “hire American” and crack down on both documented and undocumented immigrants alike, his company is again seeking seasonal foreign workers for one of the luxury resorts he still profits from as president. The request from Trump’s business comes days after his administration released a raft of new seasonal work visas, fulfilling a request from a group that held a fundraiser at another Trump resort less than two weeks earlier.

The timeline demonstrates how Trump’s company benefits from special interest spending aimed at influencing his administration, while it also takes advantage of his administration’s policies.

The New York Times recently reported that industry lobbyists anxious about the Trump administration’s delayed release of a new batch of H-2B visas, which allow foreign workers to do seasonal work in the United States, held a fundraiser last month at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Less than two weeks later, the Trump administration announced that the visas would continue to be issued.

On the same day the fundraiser was reported by the Times—just five days after the administration released the new visa spots—President Trump’s Bedminster, N.J. country club filed a request with the Department of Labor’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification, seeking seven cooks and a bartender. Two days after that, it posted positions for nine servers.

The job openings mark the first time in Trump’s second term that his business has sought to hire new foreign workers—though there are listings for open positions at Trump’s Virginia winery that were posted last December.

The announcement for the event, held by the Seasonal Employment Alliance’s PAC, highlighted the intentional choice of Mar-a-Lago as a venue and framed Trump’s businesses as an avenue for influence with the new administration. “Given Trump’s victory,” the release states, “the Mar-a-Lago event calendar is full, and we were very fortunate to have secured a spot on their calendar, especially a night where there is a decent chance President Trump will be there.” It notes that the “exclusive opportunity for SEA members” was “due to the generosity of SEA board member and Mar-a-Lago member Peter Petrina.” (In addition to being a paying customer at Trump’s club, Petrina has contracted with the Trump Organization in the past to recruit foreign workers for its properties.)

The invitation for the fundraiser notes opportunities for members to stay at Mar-a-Lago and play golf at Trump’s nearby course—both of which sold out. And if that didn’t offer members enough opportunities to spend money at Trump’s businesses, the invitation notes that they can head to another Trump property an hour away, Trump Doral in Miami, and take advantage of special rates for two more nights.

And this interplay between special interests and Trump’s own business interests was all too predictable. Not only does the Trump Organization have a history of hiring undocumented immigrant and passing over American applicants for foreign workers, it also has a history of using legal pathways for foreign seasonal workers like this, which he now oversees as president. In 2020, CREW detailed how Trump’s businesses benefitted from the actions taken by his administration, including the H-2B visas that provide his business the opportunity to hire the foreign workers he has built a political career on vilifying.

Pouring money into the president’s businesses with the hope of getting face time with the president—all while his businesses take advantage of his administration’s policies—is one of the clearest demonstrations of the corruption that has been at the core of Trump’s public service career.

Last year, Trump’s businesses reportedly sought to hire more foreign workers than any prior year on record, and the new data shows that his businesses will continue to seek foreign workers while he is president, one of the very groups of people that he has publicly disparaged for years.

Here is what ChatGPT had to say about the Trump Organization’s hiring practices:

Yes — there is a documented record that the Trump Organization did employ undocumented workers at various times and places, despite public statements by Donald Trump and company representatives denying or minimizing it. The details are based on multiple news investigations and legal records:

Investigated Instances of Undocumented Workers

1. Golf Clubs and Resorts (2010s)
Investigations by The Washington Post and others found that undocumented immigrants worked for years in jobs like housekeeping, groundskeeping, and food service at multiple Trump Organization properties, including golf clubs in New York, New Jersey, Florida, and other locations. Some workers said they started years earlier and believed managers knew they lacked legal work authorization. After these reports, the company fired dozens of such workers and later expanded its use of the E-Verify system to check new hires.

2. Westchester and New Jersey Clubs
At Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, NY, and in Bedminster, NJ, workers alleged they were hired despite being undocumented; in some cases, supervisors reportedly helped workers obtain fake Social Security cards and green cards.

3. 1980 Trump Tower Site
During the demolition of the Bonwit Teller building (pre-Trump Tower), hundreds of undocumented Polish laborers worked on the site. Trump later denied knowing about this, but testimony and legal filings indicated his team was aware. A lawsuit over this labor dispute was settled in 1998 for approximately $1.4 million.

Company Response vs. Allegations
Official Denials: Trump and his spokespeople have denied knowingly hiring undocumented workers and noted the use of E-Verify at many properties.

Investigative Findings: Journalistic investigations documented multiple cases where undocumented workers were employed for long periods, often before broader use of verification systems.

Legal and Public Reaction

Settlements & Lawsuits: The Bonwit Teller/Polish workers case resulted in a long-settled suit; there haven’t been major criminal penalties tied directly to these employment practices.

Political Scrutiny: Members of Congress and advocacy groups have called for investigations into these alleged hiring practices.

Summary

Yes, according to multiple credible investigations and legal records, the Trump Organization employed undocumented workers at various properties over the years — including in housekeeping, groundskeeping, and other roles — even while company leaders publicly denied or disputed these practices.

https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/as-trump-pursues-mass-deportation-his-businesses-again-seek-foreign-workers

Source: MSN, BrieAnna J. Frank, USA TODAY
Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Protection proposed new rules that may require selfies and social media history from foreign visitors traveling to the U.S. (© Getty Images)

Applicants for certain visas will have their online presence reviewed as part of a new State Department policy that went into effect on Dec. 15.

The policy expands previous online review requirements, which applied to foreign students and exchange visitors, to include all H-1B applicants, who work in specialty occupations and are seeking temporary entry to the United States, as well as their dependents.

The State Department announced the new policy in early December, saying applicants are “instructed to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to ‘public’” to facilitate the review.

“The Trump Administration is focused on protecting our nation and our citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process,” a State Department spokesperson told USA TODAY. “A U.S. visa is a privilege, not a right.”

The change comes months after President Donald Trump introduced a $100,000 annual application fee for H-1B visas.

Courts have historically affirmed that First Amendment rights are applicable to people lawfully within U.S. borders, even if they aren’t American citizens. That includes a district judge’s September ruling against the Trump administration over its efforts to deport noncitizen student protesters over their pro-Palestine speech.

“No one’s freedom of speech is unlimited, of course, but these limits are the same for both citizens and non-citizens alike,” the judge wrote in the ruling, which the administration vowed to appeal.

The government far more discretion when it comes to making speech-based visa decisions about foreigners physically outside of the country.

Here’s what to know about the new policy and its First Amendment implications:

What online content would disqualify an applicant?

The department “uses all available information in visa screening and vetting to identify visa applicants who are inadmissible to the United States, including those who pose a threat to U.S. national security or public safety,” the announcement said.

The public announcement did not provide details on what officials would be specifically looking for in the reviews or what types of content would be deemed disqualifying.

Reuters previously reported that H-1B application reviews will consider a person’s participation in “censorship,” including work in disinformation, content moderation and fact-checking, to be potentially disqualifying, according to a State Department cable obtained by the news organization.

“If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible,” the cable said, according to Reuters.

Why was this policy created?

The new policy was announced around the same time as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services paused immigration applications from 19 countries deemed by the administration to be high-risk.

The agency’s Dec. 2 memo specifically referenced a foiled Election Day terrorist attack in 2024 and the shooting of two National Guard members patrolling Washington in late November.

Another Afghan man was arrested in connection with the Washington shooting, which killed 20-year-old West Virginia National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom. The other victim in the attack, 24-year-old U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, was “slowly healing” as of early December.

“In light of identified concerns and the threat to the American people, USCIS has determined that a comprehensive re-review, potential interview and re-interview of all aliens from high-risk countries of concern who entered the United States on or after Jan. 20, 2021, is necessary,” the memo said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Dec. 9 proposed a rule that would impose new biometric requirements and increased data collection for foreign tourists.

Why are some concerned about the policy?

Some experts said the lack of public information about what the online presence reviews would specifically entail have left immigration attorneys unsure how to advise their clients.

The expanded requirements could cause a “big interruption” for American businesses wanting to hire foreign workers whose application processes are being delayed by the more thorough reviews, immigration attorney Matthew Maiona said.

Many visa applicants have already received communication delaying their appointments by several months, he said.

He noted, though, that consulates and embassies have a right to review applicants’ backgrounds and make determinations about potential threats.

But there are also “gray areas,” and the lack of specifics has left attorneys “scrambling” to figure out how to advise their clients, Kate Angustia, supervisory policy and practice counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said.

It’s unclear, for example, if the administration would reject an H-1B applicant’s request because their child posted “Free Palestine” on social media, she said.

“We don’t know the scope of the problem, but the fact that anybody’s free speech could be abridged is problematic and is something we don’t support,” Angustia said.

Why do some support the policy?

But others challenged the notion that the policy presents free speech challenges.

“Nobody who is not a citizen of the United States has an inherent right to come to the United States,” said Ira Mehlman, media director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which seeks to reduce overall immigration. “We can make decisions based on any number of considerations.”

He noted the policy is not based on immutable characteristics like race or religion, adding that the U.S. Supreme Court has given the president “broad latitude” to define what constitutes a national security threat.

Community member Ana waves an American-Mexican flag in a show of support for detainees near federal agents blocking protestors during an ICE immigration raid at a nearby licensed cannabis farm on July 10, 2025 near Camarillo, California. Ana said she knows some of those detained and their families. Protestors stood off with federal agents for hours outside the farm in the farmworker community in Ventura County. A Los Angeles federal judge is set to rule Friday on a temporary restraining order which would restrict area immigration enforcement operations.

Mehlman made a distinction between mere policy disagreement and “overtly anti-American kind of rhetoric,” saying that the latter can be disqualifying because being granted an American visa is a “privilege, not a right,” echoing language used by the State Department in announcing the new policy.

“There have always been ideological exclusions,” Mehlman said. “We don’t admit Nazis to the country, even if Microsoft wants to hire them.”

BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at bjfrank@usatoday.com.

USA TODAY’s coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: New visa rules require social media reviews. What it means for free speech

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/new-visa-rules-require-social-media-reviews-what-it-means-for-free-speech

Source: MSN, Somaiyah Hafeez
Photo: Kinard Lisbon, AP (Copyright: South Carolina Department of Corrections)

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to bring the death penalty to Washington, D.C. The presidential memorandum directed Pam Bondi, the U.S. Attorney General, and Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, to fully implement the death penalty in Washington, D.C.

While signing the order, Trump once again said that after deploying the National Guard in the capital, crime rates have gone down. He said that there wasn’t a single murder in four weeks, an unverified claim.

“This is a very safe city now”, Trump said.

“This went from the most unsafe city in the country to the safest city in the country”, Trump said while making these unverified claims.

Trump said that female workers at the White House have been thanking him for making the city safer.

“Capital punishment for the capital city”, he joked.

The attorney general said that the administration is seeking the death penalty not only in the capital but across the country.

Last month, Donald Trump said he plans to bring capital punishment back to Washington, D.C., as he discussed his crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital during a Cabinet meeting.

“If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington, D.C., we’re going to be seeking the death penalty,” he clarified. “And that’s a very strong preventative. And everybody that’s heard it agrees with it.”

Capital punishment has been abolished in D.C. since 1981, when the D.C. Council voted to repeal it. The last time anyone was executed in the district was in 1957, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Trump also signed an executive order that says a proposed agreement on bringing TikTok under U.S. ownership meets key security concerns. He said that China’s Xi has approved of proposed deal putting TikTok under U.S. ownership.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-signs-order-to-bring-death-penalty-to-washington

Source: CNN, John Fritze
Photo: Demonstrators protest for immigrant rights outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on May 15. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post/Getty Images)

The Supreme Court is turning to the final weeks of a busy term that started off with blockbuster appeals over transgender rights and TikTok but that has increasingly become wrapped up in the policies and politics of President Donald Trump.

With more than half of its argued cases from the term that began in October still pending, the justices are now working toward issuing a flurry of opinions through the end of June that could have profound implications for the federal government, religious interest groups and millions of American people.

The 6-3 conservative court’s end-of-term push has been complicated and overshadowed this year by more than a dozen emergency appeals tied to Trump’s second term, including cases dealing with mass firings, immigration and the president’s efforts to end birthright citizenship. Those cases will continue even after the court rises for its summer break.

Here are some of the most important outstanding appeals:

Birthright citizenship

The first argued appeal involving Trump’s second term has quickly emerged as one of the most significant cases the justices may decide in coming weeks. The Justice Department claims that three lower courts vastly overstepped their authority by imposing nationwide injunctions that blocked the president from enforcing his order limiting birthright citizenship.

Whatever the justices say about the power of courts to halt a president’s executive order on a nationwide basis could have an impact beyond birthright citizenship. Trump has, for months, vociferously complained about courts pausing dozens of his policies with nationwide injunctions.

While the question is important on its own – it could shift the balance of power between the judicial and executive branches – the case was supercharged by the policy at issue: Whether a president can sign an executive order that upends more than a century of understanding, the plain text of the 14th Amendment and multiple Supreme Court precedents pointing to the idea that people born in the US are US citizens.

During the May 15 arguments, conservative and liberal justices seemed apprehensive to let the policy take effect.

Transgender care for minors

Tennessee is among a growing number of states to enact laws limiting or banning gender-affirming care for minors. Republican lawmakers who support those bans say that decisions about the care should be made after an individual becomes an adult and that states have broad power to regulate medical treatment within their boundaries.

During oral arguments in December, a majority of the court appeared inclined to agree.

Before Trump took office, the Tennessee transgender case, US v. Skrmetti, was the court’s highest-profile pending appeal. Tennessee’s gender-affirming care ban restricts puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors and enacts civil penalties for doctors who violate the law. Surgeries are not at issue in the Supreme Court case.

The litigation will decided at a time when both the Trump administration and GOP lawmakers across the country are attempting to unwind the political and legal gains that transgender Americans have made in recent years.

LGBTQ+ books in school

The high court is also set to decide whether a school district in suburban Washington burdened the religious rights of parents by declining to allow them to opt their elementary-school children out of reading LGBTQ+ books in the classroom.

As part of its English curriculum, Montgomery County Public Schools approved a handful of books in 2022 at issue in the case. One, “Prince & Knight,” tells the story of a prince who does not want to marry any of the princesses in his realm. After teaming up with a knight to slay a dragon, the two fall in love, “filling the king and queen with joy,” according to the school’s summary. The parents said the reading of the books violated their religious beliefs.

The case arrived at the Supreme Court at a moment when parents and public school districts have been engaged in a tense struggle over how much sway families should have over public school instruction.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority signaled during arguments in late April that it would side with the parents in the case, continuing the court’s yearslong push to expand religious rights.

Preventive health care and government power

The court is juggling several major cases challenging the power of federal agencies. One of those deals with the creation of a task force that recommends which preventive health care services must be covered at no-cost under Obamacare.

Though the case deals with technical questions about who should appoint the members of a board that makes those recommendations, the decision could affect the ability of Americans to access cost-free services under the Affordable Care Act such as cancer screenings, statins that help prevent cardiovascular disease and PrEP drugs that help prevent HIV infections.

During arguments in late April, the court signaled it may uphold the task force.

The court also seemed skeptical of a conservative challenge to the Universal Service Fund, which Congress created in 1996 to pay for programs that expand broadband and phone service in rural and low-income communities. Phone companies contribute billions to that fund, a cost that is passed on to consumers. A conservative group challenged the fund as an unconstitutional “delegation” of the power of Congress to levy taxes.

If the court upholds the structure of the programs’ funding, that would represent a departure from its trend in recent years of limiting the power of agencies to act without explicit approval from Congress.

Never-ending emergencies

In years past, the Supreme Court had tended to make little news after the justices hand down their final opinions of the term and step back from their mahogany bench in the last days of June. Those days may be over.

Since Trump began his second term in January, the court has been confronted with more than a dozen emergency appeals dealing with policies from the White House and federal agencies.

Though he has railed against the federal judiciary in recent months, Trump has won more emergency cases at the Supreme Court in recent weeks than he has lost. The high court has allowed him to bar transgender Americans from serving in the military for now, end temporary deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and remove board members at independent agencies that Congress tried to shield from White House control.

On the other hand, the court has blocked the administration from quickly deporting migrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act without additional notice.

Given how many lawsuits are pending in lower federal courts, the pace of emergency cases is unlikely to slow just because the justices are eager to leave Washington for summer vacations.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/27/politics/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-transgender-care

Source: Fast Company, Dee-Ann Durbin, AP Business Writer
Photo: A food delivery rider waits for the traffic light to change Monday, March 30, 2020, in Lone Tree, Colo. (David Zalubowski, File/AP Photo)

DoorDash has been under pressure to ensure its drivers are operating legally.

DoorDash will require its drivers to verify their identities more often as part of a larger effort to crack down on unauthorized account sharing.

DoorDash has been under pressure to ensure its drivers are operating legally. Over the summer, for example, it pledged to do a better job identifying and removing dangerous drivers after a flood of complaints of dangerous driving from cities.

Officials in Boston, New York and other cities have said that in many cases, people with multiple traffic violations continue to make deliveries using accounts registered to others.

The San Francisco delivery company said Thursday it was requiring some drivers to complete real-time identity checks immediately after they complete a delivery. Previously, drivers were occasionally asked to re-verify their identities before or after a shift.

DoorDash has introduced the new system in Los Angeles, Denver, Seattle and other cities, and said it planned a wider rollout next year.

DoorDash said it also has developed an advanced machine learning system that can flag potential unauthorized account access, including login anomalies and suspicious activity. If the company detects a problem, it will require drivers to re-verify their identity before they can make more deliveries.

U.S. drivers must verify their identities with a driver’s license or other government-issued identification, and upload a selfie that matches their identification photo before they can do work for DoorDash. They also must submit to background checks, which require a Social Security number.

The company said it found that some drivers were getting around the requirements by sharing accounts with authorized users. In some cases, drivers who were not authorized to drive for DoorDash paid authorized users for access to their accounts.

Some federal lawmakers have demanded that DoorDash and other delivery apps do a better job of keeping people who are in the U.S. illegally off the platforms.

Republican U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Mike Braun of Indiana and Ted Budd of North Carolina sent letters to delivery companies in April asking them to crack down on account sharing.

“These illegal immigrants are delivering food directly to consumers’ doors without ever having undergone a background check and often without even using their real names,” the letter said. It added that working illegally can also be dangerous for migrants, creating the potential for exploitation and abuse.

The Associated Press left messages seeking comment Thursday with Gig Workers Rising and Justice for App Workers, which both represent delivery drivers.

DoorDash won’t estimate how many drivers are using shared accounts, but said its safeguards are effective. Last year, it began asking drivers to re-verify their identities monthly by submitting a selfie. The company said it is now asking more than 150,000 drivers to complete selfie checks each week, and it’s removing them from the platform if they don’t comply.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91246654/doordash-stepping-up-driver-id-checks-heres-why

Source: The Guardian
Photo: A person stands in front of a Meta sign outside of the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on 7 March 2023. (Jeff Chiu/AP)

Groundbreaking bill aims to reduce potential AI risks – requiring model testing and disclosure of safety protocol

A California bill that would establish first-in-the-nation safety measures for the largest artificial intelligence systems cleared an important vote Wednesday. The proposal, aiming to reduce potential risks created by AI, would require companies to test their models and publicly disclose their safety protocols to prevent the models from being manipulated to, for example, wipe out the state’s electric grid or help build chemical weapons – scenarios experts say could be possible in the future with such rapid advancements in the industry.

The measure squeaked by in the state assembly Wednesday and won procedural approval in the state senate. It now heads to the governor’s desk for his signature, though he has not indicated his position on it. Governor Gavin Newsom has until the end of September to decide whether to sign it into law, veto it or allow it to become law without his signature. He declined to weigh in on the measure earlier this summer but had warned against AI overregulation.

Supporters said it would set some of the first much-needed safety ground rules for large-scale AI models in the United States. The bill targets systems that require more than $100m in data to train. No current AI models have hit that threshold.

The proposal, authored by Democratic senator Scott Wiener, faced fierce opposition from venture capital firms and tech companies, including OpenAI, Google and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. They say safety regulations should be established by the federal government and that the California legislation takes aim at developers instead of targeting those who use and exploit the AI systems for harm.

Wiener said his legislation took a “light touch” approach.

“Innovation and safety can go hand in hand – and California is leading the way,” he said in a statement after the vote.

Wiener’s proposal is among dozens of AI bills California lawmakers proposed this year to build public trust, fight algorithmic discrimination and outlaw deepfakes that involve elections or pornography. With AI increasingly affecting the daily lives of Americans, state legislators have tried to strike a balance of reigning in the technology and its potential risks without stifling the booming homegrown industry.

California, home of 35 of the world’s top 50 AI companies, has been an early adopter of AI technologies and could soon deploy generative AI tools to address highway congestion and road safety, among other things.

Elon Musk, owner of Twitter/X, and founder of xAI, threw his support behind the proposal this week, though he said it was a “tough call”. X operates its own chatbot and image generator, Grok, that has fewer safeguards in place than other prominent AI models.

“For over 20 years, I have been an advocate for AI regulation, just as we regulate any product/technology that is a potential risk to the public,” Musk tweeted.

A group of several California house members also opposed the bill, with former House speaker Nancy Pelosi calling it “well-intentioned but ill informed”.

Chamber of Progress, a left-leaning Silicon Valley-funded industry group, said the bill is “based on science fiction fantasies of what AI could look like”.

“This bill has more in common with Blade Runner or The Terminator than the real world,” senior tech policy director Todd O’Boyle said in a statement after the Wednesday vote. “We shouldn’t hamstring California’s leading economic sector over a theoretical scenario.”

The legislation is also supported by Anthropic, an AI startup backed by Amazon and Google, after Wiener adjusted the bill earlier this month to include some of the company’s suggestions. The current bill removed a penalty of perjury provision, limited the state attorney general’s power to sue violators and narrowed the responsibilities of a new AI regulatory agency.

Anthropic said in a letter to Newsom that the bill is crucial to prevent catastrophic misuse of powerful AI systems and that “its benefits likely outweigh its costs”.

He also slammed critics earlier this week for dismissing potential catastrophic risks from powerful AI models as unrealistic: “If they really think the risks are fake, then the bill should present no issue whatsoever.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/29/california-ai-regulation-bill

Source: Lifehacker, Michelle Ehrhardt
Photo: Alisa Stern; Jakob Berg, Magnus Cramer Images/Shutterstock.com

Answering the questions everyone’s asking after yesterday’s historic antitrust verdict.

In a historic blow to one of the biggest of big tech companies, the U.S. District Court for Washington D.C. yesterday ruled that Google is a monopoly. In an opinion published Monday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said the company has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, and declared that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.”

On its face, the decision has nothing to do with Android, or YouTube, or any of the other services that have helped grow the company’s market dominance over the years. Rather, the focus is on its oldest business—search. Following revelations earlier this year that the company paid billions to make Google the default search engine on Safari and other browsers, the court decided that “Google’s distribution agreements are exclusive and have anticompetitive effects.”

The severity of the declaration means that Google probably can’t just pay its way out of this one. If you remember the fallout from the antitrust case against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer strategy in 2001, you’ve already got an idea of how this all could play out.

But it’s been 23 years since then, Google is much bigger now than Microsoft was at the turn of the millennium, and there’s a good chance it’s deeply embedded in your life. Here’s my best guess as to what happens next, and how the Google antitrust decision could affect you.

Is the Google antitrust decision final?

Possibly not! While Judge Mehta’s decision has been applauded by the White House as “a victory for the American people,” Google has already stated that it plans to appeal. In a statement posted to X (formerly Twitter), Google president of global affairs Kent Walker argued that its dominance is simply the natural result of its search engine’s quality—conveniently ignoring the billions it paid to Apple to ensure it was the default search option on millions of iPhones and instead focusing on a snippet in Mehta’s opinion that calls Google search, “the industry’s highest quality search engine.”

“This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine,” Walker’s post reads, “but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available.” The executive says that Google “will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use” until its appeals process is completed.

What punishments could Google face?

Because this week’s ruling focused on finding guilt, penalties are likely to be assigned during separate proceedings. But similar to how Microsoft had to settle with the DOJ to alter its business strategy in 2001, Google is likely to walk away from this with more than a fine (although a fine will probably still be involved).

Once the dust has settled, you could very well open Safari or Firefox to a screen prompting you to choose a default search engine, rather than having the browser simply choose Google for you. The EU already enforces a similar browser-selection process on both iPhone and Android, but it’s unclear what exactly the UI could look like and which alternatives might be highlighted.

It’s also possible penalties could be as severe as forcing Google to break up, but given that the courts’ complaints largely focus on just one aspect of its business, that’s unlikely.

While choosing a new default search engine might be set-it-and-forget-it on your end, it would be a big boon for Google alternatives, including Microsoft’s Bing, which Mehta’s opinion said only sees “roughly 6% of all search queries” in the United States despite being second place in the market. It’s also possible Apple might take the opportunity to build its own search engine, a notion Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman last year said the company has been toying with. While Apple has had little incentive to go through with development on that project until now, ad revenue from a homegrown search engine could help recoup money lost from its $20 billion deal with Google, which will almost certainly come to an end if Google’s appeal fails. (Gurman suggests an Apple-developed search engine could bring in ad revenue rivaling the Apple Watch.)

Will Apple be targeted next?

As the Coca-Cola to Google’s Pepsi, it’s reasonable to think that Apple could be trustbusters’ next target. The iPhone maker is currently dealing with a lawsuit filed in March that accused it of monopolizing the smartphone business, although the details of the case are perhaps a bit too different from Google’s for it to serve as a precedent.

The DOJ’s case against Apple targets how it limits third-party services on its platform in favor of Apple-developed alternatives, while its case against Google was actually about its deals with other companies. Essentially, Apple is being targeted for blocking out competition across its product suite, while the accusations against Google are more about collusion with competitors.

Like Apple, Google’s business has ballooned beyond search into the Android operating system, physical phones, its own browser, YouTube, maps, and more, but the Court’s monopoly accusation wasn’t related to how many companies Google has bought or the markets it has cornered. Rather, it was about how one facet of its business—search—interacts with other companies. It was when Google started paying Apple, Mozilla, and others to highlight its search engine that it drew accusations of anticompetitive behavior.

Apple is likely to suffer by losing its annual $20 billion payout from Google, but this case alone does not set a dangerous precedent for a similar suit. Its own DOJ case is the third it has faced in 14 years, and the DOJ’s concerns are more similar to those coming from Europe than the ones highlighted in Judge Mehta’s ruling. It remains to be seen how receptive U.S. courts are to these kinds of complaints.

Could this affect the Pixel 9 launch?

Google does not need this kind of bad press right now. Its next smartphone, the Pixel 9, is set to debut in a week, and you can bet it’s going to be pushing Google services hard during its launch event.

That said, any fallout from yesterday’s decision is unlikely to affect a launch coming so soon, as penalties still need to be decided and Google needs to be given time to appeal. Given Walker’s statement, it seems the company is planning to maintain business as usual in the meantime.

And regardless of the eventual outcome, Google’s own products are unlikely to suffer from the decision over the long term, as Mehta’s chief concerns are with the company’s payments to other device makers. As Google already owns the Pixel brand, it is likely free to continue to default its owned services on the devices it makes. That goes for the Chrome browser as well—but this could change depending on how the DOJ’s lawsuit against Apple plays out.

A surprising blow to AI

Surprisingly, the biggest victim in this decision might not be Google’s search engine, but its AI efforts. That’s because data it acquired through its search monopoly could then be applied to training its AI. If Google loses its search lead, it threatens what might be one of its biggest dataset contributors.

That said, it’s unclear how exactly Google builds its AI training datasets. While the company has incorporated AI into the search user experience, its privacy policy does not state the full extent of the “information” it uses to train AI, only promising to anonymize user data before using it elsewhere. There are exceptions—for example, the company has said it only uses Workspace data to train features like spellcheck and Smart Compose—so its hard to say how far-reaching the effects of the ruling could be.

What we do know is that marketers will be watching this case closely. In a statement emailed to press including CNN and NPR, Emarketer senior analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf said Google’s “ubiquity is its biggest strength, especially as competition heats up among AI-powered search alternatives.”

https://lifehacker.com/tech/so-googles-a-monopoly-whats-next

Source: Los Angeles Times, Mackenzie Mays
Photo: The LGBTQ+ Pride Flag, bottom, flies for the first time with the California, top, and Los Angeles flags during Pride Month outside L.A. City Hall on June 6, 2024. (Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press)

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Monday that prohibits mandating that teachers notify families about student gender identity changes, capping a yearlong battle between conservative school boards concerned about parental rights and LGBTQ+ activists worried about vulnerable youths.

The new law shields teachers from retaliation for supporting transgender student rights and prohibits K-12 “forced disclosure” rules. It comes in response to school board decisions in some red pockets of California to notify parents if their child changes their name or pronouns, or if students request to use facilities or participate in programs that don’t match their gender on official records.

The bill would also require the California Department of Education to offer resources to parents and students about how to “manage conversations about gender and identity privately.”

Attempts at gender notification policies, including in school districts in Chino Valley and Temecula, have triggered lawsuits over student privacy rights and have drawn the ire of California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who said they could cause “imminent, irreparable harm” to LGBTQ+ young people who may not feel safe coming out at home.

Since 2020, eight states, including Indiana and Tennessee, have passed school gender notification policies, according to the Movement Advancement Project. California is the first to outlaw such policies at the local level.

The Democratic-controlled state Legislature passed AB 1955 last month after a fiery debate LGBTQ+ Democrats had with Republicans who alleged the policy aimed to drive a wedge between parents and their children and was a governmental overstep.

Assembly member Chris Ward (D-San Diego), who authored the bill, said that teachers are not meant to be “the gender police” and that the new law does not intrude on the parent-child relationship.

“Politically motivated attacks on the rights, safety, and dignity of transgender, nonbinary, and other LGBTQ+ youth are on the rise nationwide, including in California,” Ward said in a statement. “As a parent, I urge all parents to talk to their children, listen to them, and love them unconditionally for who they are.”

One of the opponents of the legislation said it stripped authority from locally elected school officials and took away the ability of parents to stay informed about their kid’s education and well-being.

“AB 1955 is an outrageous attempt to keep parents in the dark while schools indoctrinate kids with radical gender ideology,” said Harmeet Dhillon, chief executive and founder of the Center for American Liberty.

This is not the first time that Newsom has waded into local school affairs.

Last year, he signed a law that fines school districts that ban textbooks portraying LGBTQ+ people and other historically marginalized groups. The legislation came after Newsom went head to head with a conservative school board in Riverside County over opposition to lessons portraying gay rights icon and slain San Francisco politician Harvey Milk.

Mackenzie Mays covers state government and politics in the Los Angeles Times’ Sacramento bureau. Previously, she worked as an investigative reporter for Politico, the Fresno Bee and the Charleston Gazette-Mail. In 2019, she received the National Press Club Press Freedom Award for her political watchdog reporting. She is a graduate of West Virginia University and proud Appalachian.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-07-15/newsom-bans-schools-from-requiring-that-parents-are-notified-about-student-gender-identity

Source: Fast Company, Grace Snelling
Photo: Wikipedia and Marathe/X

The coffee giant is retaliating against Starbuds Flowers for using a very familiar siren logo.

On the outside of its repurposed food truck, the NYC-based mobile marijuana retailer Starbuds Flowers features a logo that’s hard to miss. The familiar graphic shows a woman with a pointy crown and long wavy hair descending over her chest, surrounded by a green ring that contains the business name. In her right hand, the woman is puffing on what appears to be a lit blunt, while marijuana leaves frame the whole composition. The logo is clearly a parody of Starbucks’ Siren mascot—but the coffee giant isn’t laughing.

On June 28, Starbucks filed a copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit against Starbuds in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The legal action, which was first reported by Bloomberg Law, specifically calls out Starbuds’ operator, Brandpat, for “deliberately copying the intellectual property Starbucks has developed,” an issue that Starbucks claims was brought to Starbuds’ attention several times prior to the suit. According to the legal documentation, Starbuds displayed the smoking siren logo on its food truck, website, and products.

The Starbuds logo bears the most striking similarity to an older iteration of the Starbucks logo, which included a black and white siren graphic encased by a green circle with the words “Starbucks Coffee” and two small star details. This logo was first used on Starbucks products in 1987 and became more widely recognizable in the early ‘90s. In its filing with the U.S. District Court, Starbucks lays out all of the similarities between its intellectual property and Starbuds’ logo in an annotated side-by-side graphic. Some of the details they note include “the double-ringed green circle,” “use of all capital letters in the same white color against a green background,” and “similar proportions and composition.”

Starbucks isn’t letting the brand name “Starbuds Flowers” fly, either. The lawsuit drills down into the small business’ wordmark, pointing out that, “The word STARBUDS sounds very similar to STARBUCKS, as they are both two-syllable marks starting with “STAR.” In place of the term “BUCKS,” [Starbuds] has substituted the phonetically similar term “BUDS,” which differs only by two internal letters, shares a similar pronunciation, and is likely to sound very similar when spoken.” Touché.

The new lawsuit is just the latest in a busy few weeks for Starbucks’ legal team, which is already notorious for cracking down on potential copyright infringers. Since 2019, Starbucks has been duking it out with the Alaska-based apparel and coffee company Mountains and Mermaids in multiple legal back-and-forths. At the center of the dispute is Mountains and Mermaids’ Siren’s Brew coffee blend, which features a mermaid sipping a cup of joe against a starry night sky. This May, Starbucks sued the business for infringing on its wordmarks with the term “siren.” On June 26, Mountains and Mermaids announced on Facebook that it would “sadly be discontinuing our Siren’s Brew design in its entirety as it is known today,” and the two companies seemed to come to an official settlement on June 28.

We’ll see if the coffee giant once again finds IP victory versus Starbuds. In the meantime, if you’re thinking of designing a logo, maybe stay away from long-haired mermaids.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91150719/starbucks-just-sued-this-weed-business-for-copying-its-logo

Source: Food and Wine, Micheline Maynard
Photo: The Atlantic Beach Club on Long Island, New York State, circa 1960 (GEORGE MARKS/RETROFILE/GETTY IMAGES)

Are the fees out of control? Some of them are.

For many diners, outdoor cafes are a delightful summer sight, with festive vibes and delicious food and drinks. For owners, sidewalk and street seating was a lifeline for restaurants when pandemic restrictions were in force.

But in 2024, there’s tension in some places between bureaucrats and restaurateurs. Some cities are blocking or limiting the amount of space that cafes can use, and others have ramped up the cost of doing outdoor business.

Beginning in late May, Berkeley, Calif., began charging restaurant owners thousands of dollars a year to operate a streetside seating area. About 25 businesses have hosted them in the past, using sidewalks, parking spots, and alleys. The city said businesses now have three choices: They can operate in the street using parking spaces, use their sidewalk for seating, or convert street space into a public park, called a parklet.

The parking space conversion requires an “outdoor commerce use fee.” The cost is calculated by multiplying the number of hours the space would be in use per year, by the hourly parking fee by the number of spaces.

Here’s an example provided by Berkeley. A restaurant that uses two parking spaces with an hourly rate of $1.50 would face a fee based on 2,709 hours of normal use, times $1.50 for each space. That means two parking spaces carry a $8,127 annual fee.

If it’s meterless parking where the seating is set, Berkeley is charging the price of a temporary “No Parking” sign, which costs $221 a month. Multiplied by 12 months, that comes out to $2,652 per parking space each year.

Berkeley instituted the program because the city lost money during COVID from allowing restaurants to take over parking spaces. In 2021, for instance, council members estimated the losses amounted to $3,000 to $6,000 per space, according to SF Gate.

28 Recipes for DIY Outdoor Dining

In Chicago, a controversy went on for weeks over whether a group of popular restaurants on Clark Street in the River North neighborhood would be allowed to close the street to serve customers. Under a compromise in May, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration said restaurants can set up seating in curbside lanes on either side of the street.

But traffic will still flow down the middle — an idea that frankly makes me nervous, having driven on Clark. In fact, Alderman Brandon Reilly, who pushed for a complete closure of Clark Street, said the plan would have a “horrendous impact on traffic flow and safety on Clark Street.”

However, celebrity chef Rick Bayless, who has operated on Clark for three decades, told Fox 32 TV that he’s cool with the idea. He said his restaurants would build a half-sized wall and face tables away from the street, so the traffic doesn’t bother diners.

Some Boston restaurant owners would love to have that much flexibility. For the second straight year, cafes in the crowded North End are banned from taking part in the city’s outdoor dining program. Mayor Michelle Wu said there’s simply too much density in the old, traditionally Italian neighborhood to allow it.

20 Picnic-Perfect Salads to Pack and Enjoy Outside

In response, twenty-one restaurant owners filed a lawsuit, saying that they lost income due to the outdoor dining ban in 2023 and 2024. At a press conference in March, they said they wanted refunds of the $7,500 in fees that North End restaurants were required to pay in 2022, and compensation for the expense of storing equipment and furniture used for outdoor dining.

By contrast, New York City is allowing restaurants across the city to apply to permanently offer outdoor seating. It says the program, called Dining Out New York, is the largest such open-air dining venture in the U.S. As with pretty much everything in the city, there’s a cost. Restaurants must pay $1,050 for a four-year fee that covers either street or sidewalk cafes — or $2,100 for both roadway and sidewalk cafes. Then there’s another annual charge, which must be paid during the life of the permit that’s based on the size and location of a restaurant.

The most expensive are on either side of Central Park, where restaurants will pay $31 per square footage of sidewalk, or $25 per square foot of roadway. Restaurants can operate in the street from April through May, but must dismantle their roadway cafes in cold weather months,

So, if you’ve dreamed of a romantic date on your big-city vacation or a night out after work, you can still find a spot to linger outdoors in lots of places — except the North End.

https://www.foodandwine.com/outdoor-dining-restaurants